“The U.S. Senate passed its bipartisan infrastructure bill to the House of Representatives Tuesday after a 69-30 vote.
The provision expands the definition of a “broker,” leading to concerns the Internal Revenue Service might seek to impose broker information reporting requirements on non-broker entities such as miners. Advocates for the crypto industry pushed back on the provision, leading to lawmakers introducing amendments to try and modify the language. Ultimately, no amendments were considered, and the Senate voted to discuss only the base bill late on Sunday night.
The infrastructure bill will now go to the House of Representatives, which is expected to take up the issue in the autumn. The crypto provision faces bipartisan opposition there as well, with Representatives Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), Darren Soto (D-Fla.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Ted Budd (R-N.C.) all expressing an interest in modifying the language.
It’s unclear how much leeway the House will have to modify the bill.“
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“AMC Entertainment Holdings, which runs the largest movie theater chain in the U.S., will begin accepting bitcoin payments for tickets and concessions by the end of the year. AMC did not specify what technology it would use to process the payments. The company has 593 theaters in the U.S. and 335 international locations.
We are also in the preliminary stage of now exploring how else AMC can participate in this new burgeoning cryptocurrency universe and we’re quite intrigued by potentially lucrative business opportunities for AMC if we intelligently pursue further serious involvement with cryptocurrency.”
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“Poly Network, a protocol launched by the founder of Chinese blockchain project Neo, operates on the Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Tuesday’s attack struck each chain consecutively, with the Poly team identifying three addresses where stolen assets were transferred.
At the time that Poly tweeted news of the attack, the three addresses collectively held more than $600 million in different cryptocurrencies, including USDC, wrapped bitcoin, wrapped ether and shiba inu (SHIB).
The $600 million figure would place the Poly Network hack among the largest in crypto history.
We call on miners of affected blockchain and crypto exchanges to blacklist tokens coming from the above addresses.
Tether froze approximately $33 million in relation to the hack. Poly Network was the second Chinese interoperability protocol to be featured on the government-backed Blockchain-based Service Network.
As evidenced by all the exploits we’ve seen, cross-chain is a very hard area … with the added complexity of connections with every other chain and all their idiosyncrasies.”
“Coinbase said Tuesday it’s working with PNC Bank, the fifth-largest bank in the U.S., on a previously undisclosed crypto project. The service would give the Pennsylvania-based national bank more seamless access to cryptocurrency investments for its clients, the source said.
In recent months, we have formed partnerships with industry leaders including Elon Musk, PNC Bank, SpaceX, Tesla, Third Point LLC, and WisdomTree Investments.”
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“The fund is billed as an actively managed ETF with exposure to bitcoin futures and other investment vehicles and products that provide exposure to bitcoin. These may include crypto ETFs listed in other jurisdictions, such as Canada. The fund will not invest in bitcoin or other digital assets directly.
The investment firm is resubmitting the application with minor amendments in the hope that the greater maturity of the futures market will make for a different outcome this time around. VanEck unsuccessfully attempted to list such a fund with the SEC in 2017. Recent comments by Chair Gary Gensler have indicated that futures products may be considered.
We are committed to bring to market a bitcoin ETF. Futures markets have matured a significantly since 2017.”
“Helium is one of the few “real-world” Web 3 projects tapping token-powered incentives to fuel growth. The decentralized telecommunications network now has over 100,000 hotspots.
The network uses LoRaWAN technology to connect devices (think scooters, e-bikes or environmental sensors) to the internet. Helium hotspots, which mine HNT as a reward for expanding wireless coverage, are now in 112 countries.
What Helium has so far done with telecoms in the wireless space is almost like Airbnb enabling people to monetize their real estate in the form of a mini-hotel.
Crypto offers a new paradigm for computation that is already reaching into verticals far beyond finance and money.”
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“BitMEX will pay a $100 million penalty to resolve the [civil] charges, with $50 million going to the CFTC and the remainder to FinCEN. The blog post did not address the criminal charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes and other executives.
A consent order in the CFTC case, filed Tuesday, found that BitMEX offered U.S. persons leveraged and unlicensed crypto products – a violation of federal law – between 2014 and 2020. In doing so, BitMEX employees violated the Bank Secrecy Act, commodities regulations and CFTC rules.
This action highlights that the registration requirements and core consumer protections Congress established for our traditional derivatives market apply equally in the growing digital asset market.
As part of the settlement, BitMEX will refrain from offering futures or other types of crypto commodity contracts in the U.S. without registering with the CFTC, or operating a swap trading facility. The company is also required to ensure it has adequate KYC procedures moving forward.”
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“A total of J$230 million, or roughly US$1.5 million, will be issued to deposit-taking institutions and authorized payment service providers as part of the CBDC pilot program that ends in December. Alegislative amendment to accompany the country’s CBDC would be in place by the end of the fiscal year.
The central bank has been working with Ireland-based technology firm eCurrency Mint on the project.”
The Disrupt 